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WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

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641–650 of 662 posts

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly. That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M? Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the ac…

Craigslist did it. It is very possible to turn down money and avoid becoming a corporate animal. Does it happen? Yes. Does it happen very frequently? No.

Craigslist was self-bootstrapped, no?

No outside funding.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#642

For several years, I've been pontificating the somewhat abstract idea that a software app will one day hack the human psyche on a massive scale. And by "hack", I mean to do us harm by tapping into the same pleasure mechanisms as addictive drugs. It never occurred to me until today that perhaps Facebook is this app.

"Pontificate" implies a pompous demeanor, I think you meant pondering?

Both. My friends hear it as potification ;)

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true data apocalypse will come when ISP logs are compromised and leaked (urls visited, dns lookups, tied to ip or even subscriber ids, etc), and there is enough leaked PII floating it out there to join it to people records.

With the exception of big evil things like Comcast, you might be surprised how few ISPs keep detailed logs like this. The effort to correlate them with customers is generally not worth it unless you get a subpoena, and only then is it done manually.

In the end, incompetence might save us all :)

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#644
post #26

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building…

> We've knows Facebook tracks everything Not disputing this, but when you say 'we' I think you mean the The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid"). Many of my friends in India (where I was raised) and elsewher…

Maybe ask them how they would feel if a little robot owned by some giant corporation was following them around every day, all day long. And imagine the corporation had similar robots following everyone else around, even children. And tell them the corporation made its money by selling the information it collected to anyone who could pay. And tell them some of the purchasers use the information for various nasty things, like identity theft, And then ask them how they would feel if the robots were invisible, so they didn't realize they were being monitored. And then tell them that is what is actually happening today.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#645
In May, once GDPR becomes mandatory, we'll all be able to issue data requests to the likes of Facebook and Cambridge Analyitica etc, to find out just what they know about us. The requests are free, so with social media, you could almost mount a denial of service attack against a business if enough people make a request!

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly. That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M? Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the ac…

Supposing Signal had a larger userbase, and got offered a similar deal. Well, it basically did happen; Moxie's previous company Whipser Systems got bought by Twitter, Moxie left after a couple of years, losing his options in the process. I doubt it would happen again.

[deleted]

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the tweets in the article are not genuine or the article is untrue? It would probably be better if you engaged with the content of the story rather than virtue signal.

CA sold stolen data. CA paid out bribes to win elections. Why are you bringing up facebook giving away data that they own?

Facebook gave preferential access to data, breaching their own ToS, to a political party they supported.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't vote, I don't care. Couldn't care less about politics to be quite honest. They have a very marginal influence on my life, aspirations and happiness.

If that's true, that's a pretty handy description of what many US leftists call "privilege." There are many marginalized people, including in developed western nations, for whom the politics you're able to ignore can have decisive impact on their day to day lives. Many of these people, like many people in general, will not have the knowledge of internet technology and policy they need to protect themselves.

That's not a compelling argument.

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't put that much data out, but I don't mind being profiled. I like being suggested music that I'm susceptible to like based on other people. I think it's fine if one can infer out of my lifestyle that I would be interested in x or warn for risks of y. What is wrong with it ? I'm probably no statistical anomaly, I don't mind being part of some artificial cluster somewhere, helping having a more accurate portrayal…

You're saying you don't mind being profiled and don't see the harm in it, but in several places downthread you describe in detail how little you use the platform, how poorly it understands you, and how little exposure you get to it. If these things are true, you're not a good example of how harmless their profiling is for other people.

Then isn't it that a reasonable, unprofiling, harmless use is possible?

Re: WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

#650
post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were just conned into it all Were they conned? The truth is if the US doesn't fix illegal immigration and put a general slowdown on legal immigration then conservatives are done for and their way of life is going to be slowly destroyed. All indicators show first and second gen migrants overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

some of this is the hostility immigrants feel from republicans and republican voters. as such, the gop and it's constituents contribute to (or perhaps even principally cause) this. the premise that all/most immigrants "are liberals" (by apparent virtue of their immigrant-ness) is almost hilariously a stereotypical position to hold. i wonder what a gop explanation for why that is true would look like.

> some of this is the hostility immigrants feel from republicans and republican voters.

A little. But it's not one of the big three drivers -

The first is social welfare.

The second comes down to ideology - American conservatives have a unique brand of beliefs.

For example the value placed on:

- Freedom of speech - Firearms - Individual liberty over collective safety/feelings/effective policy

These traits are not shared by conservatives in the rest of the world. In the U.K. for example the majority of conservatives are happy with strict firearm control.

The third is personality - American conservatives are loud, proud, straight talking, and rough-edged - this rubs conservatives from other countries the wrong way.

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